Richard Carpenter

May 3, 2012

I used that same guide Bruce Epper mentioned back in the day, and it works rather decently. It is a involved process, but if you follow it through, you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Microsoft is talking about Windows 8 “Windows to Go” feature that will do this, but Win 8 is several months away…

Also, UNetBootin is a great piece of software, I also recommend it. But I would like to also mention Reconstructor, It will allow you to customized ubuntu, letting you tweak it how you like it then lets you make a ISO of the installed copy of ubuntu. After that you can feed the ISO to uNetBootin and make your own custom live usb distro.

Kyem Ghosh

May 4, 2012

visit http://www.pendrivelinux.com you’ll get loads of applications according to your coice to make your usb pendrive a bootable drive…. I generally use YUMI- multiboot installer and the Universal USB installer…. Here you install your linux to your flash drive and make your linux portable!!! I’ve got nothing for Windows…

zoniweb

Himanshu Singla

May 19, 2012

There are so many reasons why having a Linux distribution on a USB drive can come in handy. From having a “rescue” OS on your keyring to being able to install a new distribution on your EeePC, a “thumb drive” Linux has many uses. But getting Linux onto a USB drive can’t be simple. Right? Wrong. There is a tool, UNetbootin, that makes installing Linux on a USB drive simple.

UNetbootin can be used on either Linux or Windows. In this article, we’ll be illustrating it for Both.

Note: Not all USB installations will work on all machines. This can be an issue with your BIOS or your USB drive. If you install an OS that doesn’t work, try another. But after all that work, you might wind up with a machine that simply won’t boot from a USB drive. You have been warned.

Using Unetbootin with linux:

1. The first thing to do is download a copy of UNetbootin from Download unetbootin for linux (For our purposes we’ll download the Linux universal install binary (named unetbootin-linux-299).Once that has finished you will need to issue the Following command in order to make the file executable.

chmod u+x unetbootin-linux29

2. Once the file is executable issue the following command (from the same directory unetbootin-linx-299 is stored) to see the application running.
su ./unetbootin-linux-299

3. But you’re not ready just yet. Depending upon your distribution, you might come across an error involving p7zip-full. This might be in your distribution’s repositories. If you use Mandriva you can install p7zip but you will not have the full package. If you use Ubuntu you can get p7zip-full with the following command

apt-get install p7zip-full

4. Before you run the application you will need to insert and mount your usb drive. Stick in your usb drive and then issue the following command to find out where your usb drive is located.

dmesg

5. Mount that and then issue the following command. When you issue the command you will see the UNetbootin window.

su ./unetbootin-linux-299

6. Once this window is up and running you are almost there. If you have very specific needs for your distribution you will most likely have an image file downloaded to use. If you do not you can select your distribution from the drop down list. First you select the distribution and then you select the version (or release).

Note: Unless you have a very large USB drive you will most likely want to use a netinstall version of your distribution. If you do happen to have a large USB drive you can go ahead with a full distribution. If this usb drive is for rescue purposes, or just to have a version of Linux with you at all times, a distribution like PCLinuxOS Minime is a greate choice

7. Once the process is done you will have two buttons to click, Reboot and Exit. Don’t bother with the Reboot button. click the Exit button and UNetbootin will close. You can now unmount your drive and reboot your machine to see if the installation works.Note: When your machine boots you will need to make sure it first boots from the USB device

Now Start the Unetbootin.
Click the disk image radio box and browse to select linx iso
Now set your target USB drive and click OK to start the creation UNetbootin Live USB Creation from an ISO
Once the unetbootin insatller has completed, click reboot. now UNetbootin installation is finished.
Set your system BIOS or boot menu to boot from the USB device and enjoy favorite live linux on USB

George Monroe

July 31, 2012

have you thought about virtualBox ?

Timothy Liem

August 13, 2012

you can easily install Linux (I refer to Ubuntu as it’s the most user friendly distro out there) on pendrive by boot the LiveCD or LiveUSB (create the LIiveUSB by using UNetBootIn). after you click on “install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS” (I assume you will install Ubuntu 12.04), choose the place where your pendrive is connected (usually on /dev/sdb) and install it just like usual. I must warn you that the installation on pendrive takes longer than HDD installation.
UnetBootIn can’t save the application you installed before even it has the option to make a space that will be preserved across reboots. And so far, I don’t find this feature work on me.

Shehan Nirmal

Patrick Dickey

September 1, 2012

For newer versions of Windows (read as Vista or Windows 7), Microsoft has a tool that will allow you to install it via USB. But, as for creating an actual Windows installation on a USB Thumb Drive, I’m not sure if that’s practical. Especially with the more recent versions, as they require upwards of 20GB to maintain.

For older versions of Windows (read as XP), you could try BartPE if it’s still being developed. In fact, he may have one for Vista or 7, but I’m not sure anymore. It’s not an actual “Windows” installation, but is a customized Preinstallation Environment based on the Windows CD. You can find it at http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

As for Linux, either unetbootin as Bruce mentioned, or some distributions will have specialized ISO files for installing from a USB pen drive. They will essentially be “Live CD’s”. There are guides available (such as through the backtrack distribution) to make the pendrive “persistent” (so you can update and save work to it).